"Writing is a skill, not a talent, and thus one's ability as a writer can be improved by thoughtful effort. The problem with some people is that they graduate college as good writers, experience early success on account of that, and thus never devote themselves diligently to the relentless quest for improvement that could make them great writers."

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

I have decided to include a chapter on you in my upcoming book, which will be released in April and which deals with the structural deficits of the American information flow. You will be in good company.

Ah. A late addition to his forthcoming paperback, Hot, Fat, and Clouded: The Amazing and Amusing Failures of America's Chattering Class, which is described online thus:

A pundit is as a king. America replaces its presidents, its senators, and its generals, but a pundit made is a pundit forever. From this, we may determine either that every American pundit is so deserving of his position in the punditocracy that he ought to hold it forever, or that some pundits are in fact not qualified for their roles but nonetheless remain in place by way of inertia. This state of affairs is either very good or very bad for the public's understanding of crucial issues. Hot, Fat, and Clouded assumes the latter, and from this position serves as the most damning attack yet written on the failures of the opinion class. Ignoring the nation's more obviously ridiculous media figures, the book concentrates instead on America's "serious" commentators: The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, The Washington Post columnists Richard Cohen and Charles Krauthammer, and The New Republic editor Martin Peretz among others.

Also, a very curious arrangement Brown has with his publishers. Less than three months before the advertised March 1 publication date, Brown is permitted to insert into his manuscript a chapter on me.

Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times, Cohen and Krauthammer are columnists for the Washington Post, and Peretz is the longtime editor-in-chief of the New Republic. All might rightly be described as well-known "pundits" of the "chattering class," whereas I . . . well, this is very curious, to say the least.

Barrett's publisher should retitle the book, People That Barrett Brown Doesn't Like (Mainly Jews).

Hit the tip jar, you ungrateful bastards!

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